I recommend resurrection wholeheartedly to those who are whole of heart and whose hearts fill most wholly the whirling holes ringing roundabout us between the astral levels engulfing souls, hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls, she sells shesouls by the sheshole. Trips off the tongue. Yes. This will be how I will preface the collection of the most promising young poets. I have them all. The important ones. Nobody overlooked. I remember it now, my work I left when I died. But I am back and it is through logos I shall become important. My story, my return from death, embroidered with poetry, will become our missing national epic. I’ll gather my followers. Malachi Mulligan of course and he will bring in Haines, who else? Who else? I will overlook nobody. My head is whirling, my thoughts are simply swirling! Oh yes and I mustn’t forget the letter the kid gave me to publish. Foot and mouth? Well if it is important it will go in. Now, I must take care of my smell before I gather genius and talent to my service. My astral body was much more pleasant than my physical. But I exist! I exist! Why do I feel so nauseous?

Like this:

Haines, the dog of my enemy, and I just stood pale, silent, bayed about. What do I want from these pretenders then or now. Live their lives. His life to be his and mine to be mine. For this I am pining? He is not fortune, he is fortune’s primrose knave. Smiling at my fear. Mocking me in their house of death. Enough. Nobody wants my medieval abstrusiosities. Tell the truth. He saves men from drowning and I shake at a dog’s bark. Would I save somebody? I’m not a strong swimmer. The water is cold, soft. But spit it out, yes, I would want to. I would try. It’s his eyes, though, a drowning man’s eyes scream the horror of his death. I would drown with him. Together. I could not save her. Lost.

Like this:

Haines, steeped in a study of American fundamentalism, asked me if I had ever accepted Jesus as my personal lord and savior. Jesus Christ. He must suspect all Americans think that if dinosaur bones exist then there must be dinosaurs roaming around somewhere. What God created must always be, no? Or more likely he must think that in America everybody thinks the bible is a voice talking about us now. Right now. See here in Psalms, it says that the economic downturn will end soon. Such good news! Good God. Yes, Haines, all America believes that in the beginning God said let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth and also under the earth, bones of dead things with aged appearance, and let humanity find these things and argue about Time’s beginnings and how long everything took to make, and big bangs and original sins and first floods and first falls and lines of time and a beginning and an end and a guy on a throne who created it all and has since kept busy involving himself in the daily minutia of our lives. Jesus it took six thousand years to get through one conversation with Haines. He wanted to know about creationism in schools and that sort of thing, but Haines, most (I do not say all) Americans have a fine understanding of Darwin. Let’s hear some nice reasonable science from the man himself and end this discussion right now:

Charles Darwin: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.

Shut up, Darwin! Come on man, back me up. What the hell are you doing? Good Christ take it back.

Charles Darwin: I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion and used the Pentateuchal term of creation by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process.

Nice save. (rolls eyes).

I deny successive Time and the deity it creates. You behold in me a horrible example of free thought.

Like this:

It was a moment, like a recollection of things to come, walking between Haines and Buck when Buck turned to look at me and said nothing. In that silence I saw my own image, looking shabby in dusty black (insincere?) between the two of them looking hip and expensive. Is this how others see me?

Buck still leading Haines on about my Hamlet theory, although so far I am not tempted to break my silence. I’ll tell it when I tell it, it can wait. Whatever. To him it won’t be worth more than the price of a pin. He told Haines I prove by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father. Haines probably thinks I am my father’s ghost. He also thinks Seattle is much like Elsinore (I don’t see it). With the full weight of ownership of his rightful property that can only come from an Englishman who hasn’t read it, Haines called Hamlet a wonderful tale. How delightful. Isn’t that special.

Like this:

So we each have a key to the apartment but there is only one do-not-duplicate key for the building, and from the very initial moment of our shared existence we have struggled over it, clandestinely. At the moment I have it. Haines wanted to know what’s the rent? $700. There are several studios like ours along the Market, but Buck told Haines ours is the omphalos, which would be about the right size of our place if the Market were a body but in that case our little hole in the wall would be located a bit farther south and around the back. They say all dynamic systems are sensitively dependent on initial conditions, and the current one I am flapping around in is starting to bug me. I’m feeling denied.

Like this:

So where do I get money, from those to whom I am in debt (the milk woman) or from those who will never feel indebted to me (I don’t need to tell you)? Buck has been working on Haines he says on my behalf. Play them he says and to hell with them all. I see little hope.

Like this:

Haines asked for little pieces of me to insert into his dissertation. Asked. I say asked but it was more of an announcement closely followed by assumption. Wants to collect the things I say and contain them into his pages as his discoveries. How charming. Buck wants me to give him my Hamlet theory but I don’t put out for free.

Like this:

Buck talking about drinking my paycheck again. His solemn duty to go on a bi-monthly bender courtesy me. Asked this morning if this is the day for my monthly bath. Told Haines I am the unclean bard. All Seattle is washed in the rain and if I could scrub my soul I’d be clean again. Again that inner bite of deceit. Hits the spot.